Chapter 1
OLIVER
Present Day
“Oh, that’s so sweet!”
To my left, Gerard’s grin splits his face wide open as he points at a poster board covered in red glitter hearts.
The words “MY HEART BEATS FOR GUNNARSON’S ASS!
” are painted in thick black letters that drip slightly at the bottom edge.
In the corner is a crude drawing of what is unmistakably his backside.
Tonight’s the final game of this year’s Frozen Four, and everyone and their mother has come out to see us three-peat. It’s been a long, hard road, but I knew we’d end up here again. Not because I’m cocky—okay, maybe a smidge—but because I know this team like the back of my hand.
“Is it just me, or is Gerard’s ass going to be the most famous thing that comes out of this season?” asks Drew Larney with a shit-eating grin.
Now, he’s a cocky son of a bitch, but beneath all that swagger is a guy who’d throw himself in front of a bus for his friends.
His weakness is his mouth—it runs faster than his skates sometimes, and he’s earned more than his fair share of penalty minutes because of it. But his loyalty? Un-fucking-matched.
I scan the bench, taking stock of the rest of the team. These are my guys. My responsibility.
There were nights this season that left us feeling defeated. When we lost three games in a row. When the Ice Queen, an infamous gossip blogger, meddled in Drew and Jackson’s relationship. When one of the freshmen almost got suspended for brawling with a Penn State player.
But I was there for my guys every time. I cracked jokes when the silence got too heavy. I ran extra drills when their confidence wavered. I reminded them why we lace up in the first place.
I think about my parents somewhere in the stands. Mom’s no doubt crying already. Dad’s wearing a jersey with my name on the back, probably the one with the coffee stain he refuses to wash out because we won the first Frozen Four while he was wearing it.
I can’t let any of them down. Not my family. Not my friends. Not my teammates.
Before I can get too deep into my head, Coach Donovan clamps his massive hand down on my shoulder. He’s dressed in a suit that’s expertly tailored to his impressive build.
“Listen up, boys.” His voice cuts through the pre-game energy, instantly commanding our attention. “I’m not going to stand here and give you some sappy movie speech about destiny and heart or whatever bullshit Hollywood thinks wins championships.”
A few of the guys chuckle, but Coach’s hazel eyes narrow, and we all straighten up.
“Brickwood’s good. Damn good. They’ve got size, speed, and nothing to lose.” He pauses, letting that sink in. “But you know what they don’t have?”
“Gerard’s ass?” Drew mutters under his breath, earning him a sharp thwack upside the helmet.
“They don’t have you.” Coach’s eyes land on each of us in turn. “They don’t have three years of chemistry. They don’t have the hunger that comes from defending a dynasty. And they sure as hell don’t have what it takes to beat the best damn hockey team this side of the Mississippi River.”
My chest swells with pride. This is why I respect the hell out of Coach Donovan.
He’s tough—sometimes brutal in practice—but he believes in us.
After they slapped the C on my jersey this year, I became a student of his coaching playbook—watching how he’d tear us down one minute and build us back stronger the next.
I’ve tried to emulate that this season as best as I could, though I reckon I ended up more of a supportive big brother rather than a hard-ass father figure.
“Jacoby, Larney, Gunnarson—you’re my first line. Set the tone early. Graham, you’re a wall tonight. Nothing gets through.”
Our goalie, Kyle, gives him a curt nod.
“Now get out there and remind everyone why we’re the defending champions. Not because of fan posters memorializing hockey butts”—Gerard blushes at that—“but because we’re the best!”
The roar of the crowd is deafening as we take the ice. My skates carve into the fresh surface, and I breathe in that perfect cocktail of frigid air and anticipation. This is it. Everything we’ve worked for comes down to the next sixty minutes.
I take my position, the familiar weight of my stick comforting in my hands. To my right, Drew settles in at center ice, all traces of cockiness replaced by determination. Gerard flanks him on his right, and despite the pressure, he still manages to wave at the other team.
The Brickwood Bulldogs are lined up across from us, their burgundy jerseys transforming them into an army of angry wine bottles. Their center is a beast of a guy, easily six-foot-four with thick arms and even thicker legs. But as we all know, size isn’t everything.
The referee skates over to us with the puck in his hand. My thighs burn with tension as I drop an inch lower. In the net, Kyle’s eyes track everything through his mask. Our defensemen—Mason Bay and Nathan Paisley—position themselves perfectly nearby.
The puck drops. Drew’s stick flashes out, but Brickwood’s center is faster, knocking the puck backward.
I angle to cut off the passing lane, and everything around me fades to white noise.
Nothing exists but blade against ice, and that crystalline moment when instinct takes over and thought disappears.
One of Brickwood’s defenseman tries to thread a pass up the boards, but I’m there, my stick intercepting the puck with a satisfying crack. Without needing to check, I know Gerard’s breaking toward the net. We’ve run this play a thousand times. I bank the puck off the boards, right onto his tape.
“Let’s go!” Drew shouts, already in perfect position for a give-and-go.
Gerard feeds him the puck, and suddenly we’re flying. Three on two. Brickwood scrambles, but we’re a well-oiled machine. Drew fakes a shot and slides the puck to me. I one-time it back to Gerard, who finds a seam between the defenders.
The Brickwood goalie sprawls, his pads stretching desperately across the crease in anticipation.
Gerard takes his shot—top shelf, where Mom keeps the good cookies.
PING!
The puck rings off the crossbar, and my heart drops into my skates. So close. But there’s no time to dwell on what almost was. Brickwood’s already transitioning, forcing me to hustle back.
This is going to be a war.
A Bluetooth speaker has been cranked to maximum volume, but it’s hard to tell what’s playing over the sound of thirty guys screaming at the top of their lungs.
The fluorescent lights overhead catch the mist of champagne spray, turning it into the world’s trashiest aurora borealis.
In the center of the madness is Gerard. Buck-ass naked, his blond hair plastered to his forehead, and his dick swinging with reckless abandon as he shakes a bottle of champagne from between his legs in an obscene gesture.
His eyes roll back, and he lets out a guttural war cry as foam erupts in a geyser, arcing across the room and catching Nathan Paisley square in the face.
“Three-peat, baby!” Gerard bellows, his bright blue eyes wild with an almost feral glee. He tosses the now-empty bottle into the trash can, grabs another from only God knows where, and pops the cork with his teeth. It ricochets off a locker and pegs Mason in the ass.
“Gerard, for the love of God, put some underwear on!” I shout, but I’m laughing too hard for my command to carry any authority.
“Pants are for losers, Captain!” He sprays me point-blank, forcing me to take it on the chin…literally.
I can’t be mad, though. We won another Frozen Four. He could dunk me in a vat of champagne for all I care.
SMACK.
“Champs, baby!”
SMACK.
“That’s what I’m talking about!”
SMACK.
Drew Larney, wearing nothing but a jockstrap, struts through the locker room, his chest puffed out and a devilish grin plastered on his face. He winds up his arm and delivers another thunderclap to some poor freshman’s backside.
“Larney, you’re gonna bruise someone,” I say.
Bolstered by my comment, he pivots and catches Kyle with a slap that echoes off the tile walls. I brace myself for murder.
Kyle Graham does not get his ass smacked.
The guy is a stone-cold wall of a human being who once stared down a charging six-foot-six defenseman without blinking.
But tonight, he throws his head back and laughs.
Full-bodied, from-the-gut laughter that I’ve heard maybe all of three times in the years I’ve known him.
“Kyle! Tell me again how you made that save in the third!” Drew says.
“I…I jus’…I put my—my fuckin’ pad there,” Kyle slurs, gesturing vaguely. “An’ then the puck was like WHAM, but I was like, NAH.”
Drew dissolves into hyena-like laughter, doubling over and clutching his stomach. “NAH! He was like, NAH!”
I lean back against the wall, the cold cinderblock pressing into my shoulder blades.
The concrete floor has become a collage of wet footprints—some bare and slapping, others still in socks, leaving damp ovals.
Mason’s jersey dangles from an overhead pipe, dripping onto his shoulder pads below, while his helmet has somehow migrated into the garbage can.
In the corner, Gerard’s lucky jockstrap—the one he refuses to wash mid-season—floats in a puddle of shampoo, the label peeling off in the sticky mess.
Kyle appears at my side, quieter now, the laughter faded to something softer. He takes a swig from his bottle and nods. “Hell of a season, Cap.”
“Hell of a season,” I parrot.
We stand there, two guys watching the beautiful disaster unfold around us.
The locker-room door swings open, and Coach Donovan steps in.
His eyes sweep over the scene—the champagne waterfalls, the nudity, the dancing kick line—and his expression cycles through about seven emotions in under five seconds before landing on resigned amusement.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t see any of this. ” His hazel eyes find mine. “Jacoby.”
“Coach.”
“Congratulations. You earned this.” A rare, genuine smile breaks across his face before he schools it back to neutral. “Now, I’m going to go do press. Your job is to make sure no one dies before I get back. Can you handle that?”
I glance at Gerard, who is now being hoisted into the air in a pose reminiscent of Dirty Dancing.
“Define ‘dies,’” I say as he tumbles forward.
Coach Donovan pinches the bridge of his nose, mutters something that sounds suspiciously like Why do I do this? and backs out of the locker room, pulling the door shut behind him. The second he’s gone, the volume triples.
“Alright, boys!” I bellow, climbing onto the nearest bench. “Hockey House in thirty! And Gerard, please put on pants before we leave the building!”
“No promises!” he roars back.